When a person has been newly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, many feelings surface both within the person who has been diagnosed and in their families. Giving voice to feelings, thoughts and fears about MS can help to eventually find new and better ways to live with the condition.
When illness comes into our lives, either as a visitor or more permanently, it usually challenges us, and the resources we have within ourselves to take in this new reality; to learn to live with it and eventually come to some acceptance around it and the many changes it may bring. When a person has been newly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, many feelings surface both within the person who has been diagnosed and in their families. The person may experience many emotions including numbness, panic, disbelief, helplessness, fear, and anger when first faced with Multiple Sclerosis or with new symptoms at other stages. Experience and support from others can enable them to identify and understand their feelings before they reach disturbing levels. Indeed it is often a relief to be allowed to be with whatever is happening emotionally and to feel the impact of this change in health. Giving voice to feelings, thoughts and fears about MS can help to eventually find new and better ways to live with the condition.
An early part of counselling is about creating a relationship of trust and safety in which the person with MS is free to experience and open up the variety of feelings and thoughts, in the knowledge that they will be supported with understanding and without judgement through the difficulty of putting what is happening to them into words. It is often a relief to be allowed to do this as such feelings can be overpowering and when allowed to be spoken and felt can often lose their power to overwhelm.Talking to someone who is objective and outside the family situation, and who has the skills to enable this to take place at a pace that is suitable to the particular person, allows the client to find a space for their own reactions to MS and then they may not feel they are burdening their families.
People often request counselling at times of crisis or change, when they are likely to find themselves in a state of uncertainty or insecurity to a painful degree, which holds them back from moving forward, and adapting to the changed circumstances in their lives. Such suffering is particularly likely to arise when there is an overload of stress around, such as times of bereavement, illness, loss of employment, breakdown in relationship or any other situation that disrupt the previous pattern of life.This service is available at the Multiple Sclerosis Centre by appointment.
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